Arctic Nettles

poetry | new

2009-03-17T17:43:00.004Z

It's been a long time since I've had anything to upload here! Nanowrimo 2008 was a success, and the novel is available over email for anyone interested. In that vein, there's a new novel in the works, which I hope to complete in the next month or so.

I've started writing poetry again very recently. The one posted here is - quite obviously - about growing up, starting to come to terms both with myself and with my family. It's very unpolished, and comments would be gratefully received.

----

I was born half-fish.

I would not go
whaleboned and disguised
back to the sea my mother swam.

My scales are highly prized
Because they show
Congenital submergence,
A defective wish.

I traded them for rawer skin
wounds yet unsalted
and wings for fins.

When childhood halted
I had to swim
Without inherited defence:
A burning fish

until the seas were crossed
and Jonas was unlost.

we cannot count the cost
but test our wings.

[Arctic Nettles (c) 16-03-2009]

nanowrimo | first part

2008-05-24T17:25:00.003+01:00

I find folklore absolutely fascinating, and would quite happily spend ages just telling it and reinventing it, so for my Nanowrimo 2007 project, I tried to create something that revolves around folklore, both European and Indian - beginning with a distinct narrative, and inserted tales, but with the boundaries blurring as the story continues.

As it turns out, I only wrote for five days out of thirty, and didn't always complete what I was writing. However, I'm still doing my background reading, and I love the concept enough that I plan to continue with this whenever I have the time - hopefully next year, on my Year Abroad, in particular.

In the meanwhile, here's what I wrote on the first day.

----

The deck swayed unevenly under her feet. Beatrix skittered across its surface and pulled herself up on the railings, staring out at the endless blue expanse, rolling out on every side like a glittery, silken carpet.

She was rocked gently by the movement of the ship across the waves, and endlessly mesmerised by its motion, and the crests of white foaming out in the distance like snow on water. The sun beat down cruelly on her skin, and she fidgeted uncomfortably, reaching for her parasol, which she had slipped through the sash of her dress.

The rails were flecked with salt and water, their metal roundness offering her smooth shoes little purchase. She struggled to pull her parasol out – the spokes had caught on her sash – and as she tried to wrestle them free, her precarious position, now maintained with only one hand, slipped, and she tumbled down, letting out a little squeal as she fell.

“Beata! Beata, what are you doing? You know your father expressly forbid you from climbing on those railings. You could fall in the ocean, you silly girl!”

Before Beatrix had a minute to sit up, delicately rearrange her ruffled dress and dust herself down, Johannes was already kneeling at her side, looking at her earnestly from behind twinkling spectacles, and a wave of brown hair he had to keep brushing out of his eyes.

“You’re not hurt anywhere, are you, Beata? Here, let me see your arms, let’s make sure you haven’t any bruises.”

Johannes gently rolled up the sleeve of Beatrix’ dress, fingers gently probing the girl’s chubby arm. Looking him in the eye, she declared, with all the dignity of her seven years, that she was perfectly unharmed, thank you, and she’d be most obliged if he didn’t say a word to papa.

At this, the earnest young German laughed and winked conspiratorially. “Not a word to your papa, I promise,” he said, smiling. “But I think he’ll notice for himself that a certain young lady has been spending rather too much time up on deck. You’re turning quite brown, Beata.”

Beatrix scowled. True, her skin had been darkening as they travelled farther into these strange waters – and those bothersome freckles were showing up all over her arms, and across the bridge of her nose – but it was no fun to be trapped down in the hull of the boat, staring out of the porthole as the level of the sea went up, and then fell down again. Up here, the waves seemed so much more alive, with the sun skimming along their surface, and bouncing off in a million crystal droplets, where a trail of white foaming horses galloped behind, where she could stare out across the waves, looking for a trace of those legendary monsters she had seen drawn on maps, and heard so many tales of ...

And up here, there were people, too. Downstairs, in the suffocating air of the cabin, she felt so lonely and so bored. Staying up on deck, whenever she had grown fed up of watching the waves, squinting vainly after sea-monsters, she could take a quiet stroll across the deck, not bothering anyone – hardly being noticed, for after all, she was only a small girl – and watch the men in their sunhats and white suits, reading and puffing on their pipes, their fat wives swathed in fashionable clothes and fanning themselves furiously. One old man fascinated and terrified her; she peered out at him with unstoppable curiosity from beneath her parasol. Numerous medals were pinned to his clothes, and every time he spoke, his fat, gingery-white moustache wobbled precariously along his face, threatening to creep up his cheeks and join his eyebrows, swallowing up his entire face in a curtain of prickly, bristly hair.

“Come on, Beata,” said Johannes gently. He was using the same tone he used on the ship’s scrawny orange tabby cat – a grown-up sounding voice, which he only put on when he was afraid Beatrix’ dad would overhear him. “Let’s go downstairs, and you can take a nap. It’s far too hot for anything else right now.”

Beatrix held his hand uncomplainingly all the way down the staircase. She hated the trip into the endlessly creaking, grumbling bowels of the ship: it made her think that she was travelling into the heart of some massive, living creature, being eaten alive by its wooden darkness, like the whale that ate Jonah whole and then spat him up on some distant shore.

Once in her cabin, Beatrix ran straight to her trunk, and standing on tiptoes, pushed the lid all the way open, until it was just propped up by the wall of the cabin. Then, leaning right in, she felt around under layers of clothes and trinkets, until her fingers found what she was looking for.

Almost too heavy for a seven year old, carefully bound and serious-looking, with its musty old pages smelling of magic and adventure and far away lands, the book was Beatrix’ treasured possession. Given to her by her grandfather before they left England, secretly stowed in her trunk so that papa wouldn’t find it and disapprove, whenever Johannes looked after her, he would read to her from its aging pages.

The stories alone were marvellous, but told in Johannes’ funny, lilting accent, his voice dusted with fairy magic and carrying pictures of far away forests and deserts where everything was different, they became alive. Beatrix leant her head against him as he sat on the couch, opening the book thoughtfully on a particular story, and as he read to her, she drifted in and out of curious dreams.

HANSEL AND GRETEL

Once upon a time, very long ago, there was a gingerbread house in the middle of a forest. An old lady had lived in this house for hundreds of years, all by herself, with no one to talk to but the birds.

And the old lady was never happy, because kings and princes and noblemen would ride through this forest on their beautiful steeds, blowing their horns and chasing the foxes, and she would come out and shake her broom at them, but not one of them ever looked at her.

Now, the old lady used to be beautiful, but every day, as the huntsmen went past, and never turned her way, she would get bitter. And every day as she got more bitter, another wrinkle would appear on her face, until eventually she looked as gnarled and wrinkled as an old silk handkerchief.

And little by little, the kings and princes and noblemen went out on more and more hunts, and they came to know and love the forest very well, and they decided that they would build homes and castles for themselves in the forest.

First came the noblemen, and they built great mansions for themselves, with stables, and ponds, and balconies, and flags, each one more magnificent than the last. Then the princes came to the forest, and they built themselves castles of stone, castles of bronze, castles of marble, each one larger and more spectacular than the one before. And every day they would ride out on a hunt, and the old woman would come out and shake her broom at them, but they never looked at her; and every day, she would grow another wrinkle on her face.

Finally, the king came to the forest, and he decided that he would build a palace unlike anything ever seen on the face of the earth. And he commissioned many builders to build him a palace of gold and silver, where milk and honey flowed freely from the fountains, and the trees were filled with singing birds. And within the walls of the palace, the king’s servants and slaves and their families lived freely, and sometimes they would join the king and his princes and nobles on the hunt, but they too would never see the old lady.

And now the old lady grew even more bitter with the king and the princes and the nobles, for they had come to the forest where she had lived for hundreds of years, and they had built their mansions, and their castles, and their palaces of silver and gold, and all she had was a small gingerbread house, on which the crows landed every day, and took another bite out of the sweet-tasting roof.

Now, within the palace, there were two young children, the son and daughter of the king’s cook. Their names were Hansel and Gretel, and two such beautiful children you have never seen. Their hair was pale as moonlight, their skin soft and white, and their bright eyes studded their open faces like sapphires. And because of their beauty and their innocence, they were the king’s favourites within the palace, and he would give them gifts of gold rattles, silver flutes, diamond horses and marble bowls, and would treat them with so much love and attention that everyone who came to the palace believed that these were the king’s children.

But Hansel and Gretel were no longer babies, and they longed to know the world beyond the palace. Every morning, they would look out at the tops of the trees, menacing and dark like rows of spears, reaching out to the horizon on every side, and they would look at each other and wonder what lay beneath those trees.

One day, they contrived a plan to get out of the palace. Gretel filled the pockets of her skirt with fresh white rolls that her mamma had baked, while Hansel stood and opened the gate for the huntsmen as they rode out. Just as the last of the horses had cantered through the gate, Gretel scuttled out afterwards, and Hansel, closing the gates, pretended that he had accidentally locked himself on the wrong side. By the time the aging doorrman noticed, the two children had disappeared into the shadows of the trees.

The forest floor was cool and damp underfoot, the carpet of age-old leaves giving slightly with every step. Before long, the splashes of colour, and the baying of hounds and the sounding of bugles had disappeared entirely, as the hunt passed out of sight. The forest closed in on the children in bewildering silence.

“Where do we go now?” asked Gretel, her voice trembling.

“Straight on, until we catch up with the hunt!” declared Hansel.

“But, brother, they have horses and dogs, and we only have our small feet. We will never catch them up. And what if we get lost in this forest? How will we find our way back? I’m scared.”

“Listen, give me one of mamma’s soft white rolls, and I will make a trail, and we can follow it all the way home.”

Gretel gave her brother one of the soft white rolls, and he tore it into small, white pieces, which he scattered delicately, deliberately, as they walked further into the forest. For a long time, they walked together in silence, gazing at this strange, ominous new world around them. Then Gretel happened to glance back over her shoulder, and saw a long line of little jewelled forest birds on the ground behind them.

“Oh,” she gasped, “How lovely. Look, Hansel.”

Hansel looked, for one moment, then ran straight at them, flailing his arms and screaming for them to shoo. But it was too late. The forest floor was picked clean behind them. The birds had eaten all the bread crumbs the children so carefully scattered.

Gretel’s bright blue eyes clouded with tears, which she brushed away hastily.

“What do we do now? How shall we get back?”

“It should be all right. We haven’t gone too far yet. We’ll just walk back in a straight line – it won’t be long before we see the palace again.”

So the children turned around and began to walk back through the forest. The floor no longer felt cool and damp, but soft and threatening under foot, as though it would gape open and swallow them at any time. Behind them, birds perched silently on the branches, and the leaves rustled lightly as they landed, sending a menacing whisper echoing around the trees.

Hansel and Gretel walked until they grew weary. Every tree looked new, different, frightening. For hours they stumbled through the trees, but not once did they glimpse the golden walls of the palace, nor the brightly coloured coats of the huntsmen. The darkness around them thickened, and their eyes began to squeeze shut as night fell around them.

Then, suddenly, they saw one warm dim light growing in the distance, crossed every now and again by a flickering shadow. Overjoyed, they ran towards it through the forest.

The house was unlike anything they had ever seen before. Small and squat, with two windows glowing orange, and a lamp burning on the table. An old lady, with a face wrinkled beyond imagination, shuffled between the stove and the rocking chair. Noses pressed against the window, the two children stared in with eyes wide.

The old lady had now been so bitter for so long that there was no shred of goodness left in her. Seeing the children, she wanted to fling the door open and shriek at them and wave her broom until they ran away in fear. Then suddenly, her face creased into a semblance of a smile, as the most delightful, wicked idea occurred to her.

Swinging the door ajar, she leaned out, and shouted to Hansel and Gretel.

“Hello, children. Won’t you come in and visit a lonely old lady?”

The children started nervously.

“Come in, do. I have made the most lovely onion stew, do you not smell it?”

They sniffed nervously. A beautiful aroma drifted out of the cottage door, making their mouths water and their eyes light up with hunger. Hesitantly, they walked towards the door, which the old lady swung wide open, and followed the children inside.

“Won’t you check the stove for me, young man? I am old and my back is stiff, I can barely bend down any more. Won’t you tell me if the food is cooked?”

Obediently, Hansel bent down, opening the stove door and looking inside. Then, with a surprising force, he found himself tumbling forwards. The stove’s giant belly seemed to swell and distend, swallowing him up in a tidal wave of heat. From a distance, he heard his sister’s screams, and the old lady’s voice laughing out loud.

“What a lovely plump young man, such a lovely dinner he will make for me.”

Gretel’s eyes widened in fury. “You old witch! You will not eat my brother!” She grabbed the soup bowl from the old lady’s table, raised it high in the air, and slammed it down hard on the witch’s head. She howled, and toppled down. Jumping nimbly over her, Gretel pulled the oven door open, reached in one hand, and pulled her brother out.

Gasping and shaking, he looked around him, and saw the witch’s body lying on the floor. “Quick, Gretel,” he cried, “We can’t stay here! Let’s run away now, before the witch wakes up again!”

The children grabbed each other’s hands and ran out of the door as fast as possible. Stumbling into the forest, they ducked between the trees, running as fast as they could until their legs were so tired they could not run any more.

Then, all of a sudden, they saw splashes of colour and heard bugles sounding in the distance ...

Johannes’ voice tailed off, not telling of the children leading the huntsmen back to the strange little cottage, where they killed the nasty witch – who they finally saw for the first time – and then they took the walls of the house apart, and brought it back to the palace, where they and their children ate it, nor of Hansel and Gretel, who slept behind them on their horses as they rode back to the palace, and were delivered back to their mother, and the king who doted on them, safe and sound, and who never dared to leave the palace again – for Beatrix had fallen fast asleep.

Johannes closed the book, and balanced it on the arm of the couch. Getting up gently, he lowered Beatrix onto the cushions, and stroked her long, blonde hair softly before putting the book back into the trunk and leaving the room.

Sleeping uneasily in the stuffy heat, Beatrix dreamt of menacing forests marching on the ship, of broad-bellied ovens that swallowed children whole, of old ladies who captured and ate little boys and girls, and of golden castles and brightly-coloured huntsmen galloping through a far away, magical land.

three poems | journal

2008-05-24T17:09:00.005+01:00

For the past year and a bit, I've kept an art journal, which is exactly what it sounds like: a diary, but with collages, pictures and so forth alongside the writing. For me, it's much preferable to keeping an ordinary diary, because I put so much effort into making each page beautiful that I don't then write tripe to accompany it.

The first two poems came from my trip to Moscow in April 2007: one inspired by a busker I passed on the bus on the way out of Cambridge, and the second by a Statue of a Porter, surrounded by faceless nudes, in Park Izkusstvo. The first line of the third poem, which dates from September 2007, was just a casual remark I overheard, and the poem grew from that.

----

1. Busker

Even the leaves were edged with gold -
The busker prostrated himself
(a sidewalk worshiper of the golden goddess)
in front of his violin case
Sweeping up the silver river that
spills into the crazy paving.

Even his hair was tinged with gold -
And he sold his talent for a song
(the song was a dream of children, four walls and a roof)
to deafened pairs of passing ears.
Five-penny raindrops fall onto the
tattered velvet of his violin case.

Even the sky was tinged with gold.
The busker shivered in the evening mists
(a golden goddess sold him her spirits for a song)
and curled in tattered cardboard walls.
His silver river poured into his cup,
he dreams of children, four walls and a roof.

----

2. My Husband

Towards the end of our days
You told me - I have seen enough
Now I must close the blinds.
And as you spoke your sparkling eyes
Fell dull.

Each morning as you left for work
My old and cracking fingers smoothed
The wrinkles in your coat
As creased and wrinkled in those days
As your face.

And with mechanical tread
And eyes politely averted from metro belles
You gravely took your post -
I waited in the steam of soup and cooking meat
For you.

Now with leaden tread, and eyes
As dull as blinds, you stand, with wrinkles in your coat
As creased and cracking as my face.
Eyes politely averted from naked stone beauties
And me:

In my soup-stained overcoat
I know,
statues can't come home.

----

3. Love

You could join the dots on that face,
Her mum would laugh (not cruel but thoughtless).
She pouted, like she practised, over buck-teeth breaking free of braces
And pulled her fringe across her eyes.

On a Friday they'd leave school at two
And as their classmates hunced over riddles of figures
He'd join the dots on her face with his tongue
And they'd find out what one + one means.

They took the number twelve up to the park,
His hands traced the shapes on her face
Until a finger slipped and new pictures formed-
A traintrack rolling over far away hills.

The traintrack he found in the lines of her body
Would take them away. She smiled in the mirror.
She scrubbed her face gently, just leaving a patch
Where they'd sealed their promises with a kiss.

[Arctic Nettles (c) 2008]

short | botanist, delicate

2008-05-24T16:57:00.003+01:00

Three snatches of writing for a story idea I developed during the first writers' session this term. The adventures of Mrs. Bogolyubova will continue once exams are over. You'll also see how this blog got its name - at the expense of the story, which has no title.

For this, we selected prompts from a box, and I got "botanist" and "delicate". I was thinking limerics at the time, and got two lines ("Her fingers were delicate / till she joined the syndicate") which then provided enough of an idea to write from.

----

The meeting was in uproar - fur flying, quite literally, as the tiny Mrs. Bogolyubova, a Russian specialist on the more obscure breeds of Arctic nettle, was picked up and hurled bodily across the room by Mr. Craklow, the chairman, in a bundle of expensive furs and pearl necklaces. She landed, remarkably, on her feet and teetered precariously on her heels for a second, then rocked forward again and reentered the debate with redoubled fury.

"I tell you, Macavity, you will not recover the box as long as I live! Sokolov trusted its secrets to me, and I will take them to my grave!"

"Only be reasonable, Ilena," implored Carathon, joining the debate for the first time, his moon face open and eyes dancing green with worry. "If we do not get the box, we will never succeed in building the time machine ..."

"What is it to me? Pah! We will all die in the end, time machine or no!" ....

----

Hotel Bellissima sat nestled in the foothills of the Alps, tiny and wooden and solid. Tourists came - and left, two weeks later, happy and refreshed, regaling Rosa and Benito with promises of returned hospitality should they ever be in the country. Rosa and Benito loved the hotel too much to leave, though. Rosa sat plump and swaddled behind the reception desk, day in, day out, chcatting and laughing with any who passed. Benito mastered the kitchens, shouting with mock fury at his sous-chef and enjoying his own culinary genius. And nothing disturbed the contented rhythm of Bellissima - nothing, that is, until Ilena Bogolyubova arrived.

Rosa thought her akin to a small Russian teddy beaar at first - round and wrapped in fur, dragging two suitcases, either of which could easily fit her inside. ....

----

Ilena ripped two leaves from the nettle, grasping its stem firmly to avoid the sting. Tossing them up in the air, she watched them float back down slowly, drifting between the golden dust motes falling in the window light.

Cupping her palm upwards, she let the leaves fall together and smiled as a familiar shape took form between the creases of her hand.

"Ah, there you are ....

[Arctic Nettles (c) 2008]

poem | sirocco sestina

2008-05-24T16:39:00.002+01:00

This poem is from the most recent writers' session. We each opened the dictionary and picked a word at random, then used these as prompts for or inclusions in our various stories. Having been studying troubadour poetry, I wanted to play with some of the styles they used - including the sestina, which is a six verse poem with six lines per verse, and the same six words end each line. I had only four words to play with, so it's not quite a sestina, but I'm happy with the effect.

The words we found were:

- Sirocco :: A hot, stifling [wind] blowing from North Africa into South Europe.
- Libertine :: A person who is promiscuous and unscrupulous, [wild].
- Faith-healing :: The treatment of a sick person by the power of religious [faith].
- Impi :: a group of warriors from the Zulu [tribe].

----

In the heat of Afric' was born sirocco wind
And stirred the hearts of young libertines, wild,
Whose foolishness could heal alone by faith
Held by the Impi warriors and their tribe.

They walked where grass grew free and beasts roamed wild
And beat against the boundaries of their tribe,
Their speech was proad and roaring like the wind,
They who defied both gods and trust and faith.

The youths and girls who questioned bounds of faith
Became cast out and exiled from their tribe,
Blew lost across the grasslands like the wind,
Their hearts and minds becoming mad and wild.

Elders and wise men gathered in the tribe
Beneath the skies where all the earth grew wild:
They called upon the guardians of their faith
Whose spirits fell upon the land like wind.

The rebels spurned their past and grew more wild,
Forgetting fast all that they knew of faith
And wandering far and further from their tribe,
Blowing from place to place just like the wind.

While mothers wept and wailed in the tribe,
Their voices carrying sadly on the wind,
Mourning their children lost unto the wild
Whose return could come alone by faith.

The deities swept forward on the wind,
Borne by the strength of prayers and trusting faith,
To bring back home the sole hope of the tribe,
To turn at last the children free and wild.

The libertines were overcome by faith
And healing seemed blown to them on the wind,
The Impi welcomed home their kindred wild
Who, in sirocco season, then rejoined the tribe.

[Arctic Nettles (c) 2008]

arctic nettles | introduction

2008-05-24T16:27:00.004+01:00

There's no need for a personal introduction, no one will have stumbled onto this by accident. But a short introduction to content might be in order.

I can't remember a time when I didn't write, although I've seldom written more than sporadically. Unfortunately, delusions of grandeur combined with shyness have resulted in me keeping a lot of what I write to myself, with two consequences - most of what I write disappears in the inevitable computer crashes, and my writing only improves according to maturity, rather than by virtue of critique.

So I've decided to go for a place I can consecrate to creative writing, and I do hope you'll find the time to read at least some of it. The point of this is to get critique, so please do leave comments! You'll find extracts from my incomplete NanoWrimo 2007 novel, assorted poems and short stories and concepts from the lovely Jess' writing sessions.

If anyone wants publishing rights to this blog to put their own stuff up, drop me an email or Facebook me.

Love,

Emilie

PS. Expect a backlog of posts to start off with! Posting time will slow down radically after the first couple of days.